Brawn is for Moms (and all women, too!)

We see them every day—the women who exit the bus, holding their sleeping toddlers or preschoolers in their arms, walking briskly toward their destination under the oppressive Texas sun. Some carry heavy grocery bags, manila envelopes with legal documents; it’s common to see a mother shift the sleeping body to free up one hand for another child. They walk and walk, kicking up the dirt, disappearing into connecting busses or neighborhoods, children still asleep.

How much are they carrying? 30 pounds? 40? My own preschooler weighs fifty pounds of goodness, and I can’t imagine scooping her up with less strength than I have. Many women flinch at the thought of picking up a dumbbell more than 12 pounds, never mind the fact that the average weight of a purse is 7 pounds. What is that word we’re so afraid of? Ah, yes—bulky.

The fear of “bulk,” unfortunately, keeps many women away from the benefits of strength training that they need, such as bone strength, lower back and pelvic floor support (areas that are often weakened by pregnancy), and overall muscular endurance to handle those sleeping toddlers, heavy laundry baskets, and constant stooping, whether we’re gardening, working labor-intensive jobs, or picking up 500 legos three times a day.

And then there is the ever-convenient line our grandmothers like to throw at us as we are on our way out the door, our femininity hanging by a string:

“You’ll hurt your reproductive organs!”

I have to say, at one point in my life, this was an incentive to work out.

Besides our grandmothers’ “advice,” we are also barraged with confusing images and messages that tell us to be “thin,” but not “too thin,” “curvy,” but not “too thick,” “toned,” but not “too masculine.” Latinas, especially, are expected to have a particular hour-glass shape, an indicator of “real” womanhood and reproductive potential that only marginalizes women whose bodies don’t meet that standard. Unfortunately, these patriarchal standards of “beauty” and “femininity” keep women from exploring their potential for strength.

We teeter on the tight-ropes of thinness, fitness, and health, and somehow believe that they all mean the same thing. To deal, we retreat from the weight room and stick to the familiarity and social acceptability of the elliptical or the treadmill, taking comfort in the female companionship and bouncing pony tails, and somehow forget that just earlier that day we rearranged the living room by ourselves or picked up a sleeping child off the floor.

The next time you’re at the gym and are headed toward the 5 pounders, turn around and elbow your way through the grunters and free-weight area squatters. Calculate the weight of your child, or the child who was asleep in his mother’s arms as you passed them up in your air-conditioned car, and opt for dumbbells of that size. You can lift them. I can almost guarantee that, at some point that day, you may already have.